The Blue Blazes (27 page)

No pulse.

Lifts his hands to her mouth. No breath.

He stands, almost falls, but gets his feet under him.

He hurries over to the ghost walking ineluctably toward the edge.

Nora’s eyes are empty caves. Her mouth a pitch black tunnel – soundless and without breath. Hitching step by hitching step she shambles forth.

He waves his hands in front of her. Tries to grab her, but his hands pass through her.

He weeps. Blubbers. Tries to hug her, hold her, shove her–

She moves past him.
Through
him.

She’ll walk to the edge. He knows that now. That’s where all the ghosts go, isn’t it? To the cusp and over. Into the abyss. Toward the writhing worm-gods beneath.

It’s then he decides: If she goes, I go.

Food for worms.

Gnashed by the teeth and heat and acid of the Maw-Womb.

He staggers back to the body. Weeping. Pulling her limp, rag-doll body close against him. He kisses her brow – a brow already gone cold. He wipes hair out of her lifeless eyes–

And leaves a purple streak across her forehead.

A message. An opportunity.
One last chance
.

He fishes in his pocket. Pulls out one of the mushrooms – still glowing in his palm, though the glow has softened. He pries open her dead mouth–

Mookie looks over his shoulder, sees her ghost is close to the edge now, moving faster than he anticipated. The ghost skips ahead five feet, then ten, disappearing and reappearing as she closes in–

He shoves the Caput Mortuum death-cap into her mouth.

Forces her jaw to chew. But it’s rubbery – a dead jaw is not meant to chew.

So he takes two fingers and shoves it down her throat. Far as it will go.

The ghost is almost at the edge. Arms out. Head up. An angel about to be received into hell.

He massages Nora’s cold throat.

Feels the clot work downward.

The ghost disappears over the edge. Mookie feels his heart fall with the specter – the sound that comes out of him is a strangled, grief-struck bleat.

But then:

Nora’s body shudders. Gasps. A great heaving intake of breath. A seizure overtakes her. She judders like a truck on rough road. A scream bubbles up and flies free–

Her eyes focus on Mookie.

“What have you done?” she shrieks.

And then she falls limp once more.

At her neck is a pulse. At her mouth, breath.

She’s alive. He holds her close. Kisses her temple.
She’s alive
.

 

28

 

This is the Ravenous Expanse. This is the Maw-Womb. A great abyss carved out of the rotten heart of the world. A deep nothing burning with distant fire. Toward the heart of the flame: the Deep Shadows, the Hungry Ones, Those Who Eat. I feel their hatred toward me even as they call me closer. They hate all us for what we have. It bleeds off of them, that jealousy. They have no fealty toward us or this place or to anything. Their loyalty is only toward themselves and their own cruelty. This is the knowledge I take with me to my death. I hobble to the edge, but I refuse to fall. I crawl back from the brink and nestle up against the wall, the infection in my side now like tree roots wrapped around pipes and breaking sidewalk. I slumber into death now – surrounded by the tiny violet eyes watching me from the outcroppings of rock above me and around me.

– from the Journals of John Atticus Oakes, Cartographer of the Great Below

 

Morning. Impossible to tell but for the brightening of dark to gray.

Skelly checks the address. It’s an old grocery store warehouse down by the harbor docks. They had a fire here years ago. Everything’s still closed up, scorched with the tongue-kiss of an old flame. She shows up in a black slicker and a Yankees baseball cap, her rockabilly persona drowned like a rabbit in a mud-hole – but she’s not here to show her colors.

Even though that’s what she’s supposed to do.

After leaving Werth with whatever it was he had to do, she and Burnsy parted ways. He gave her a pager number, to which she said, “People still use pagers?” His answer: it’s a dead technology. Then she checked on her girls. After scattering to the four corners of the city they’d meet back at another safehouse in the Meatpacking District.

And then yesterday night she got the call.

She let it go to voicemail.

Glad she did. It was him.
The Boss
. Calling a convocation of all the gangs in the city still loyal to him. Said he has “big plans”. Offered “new opportunities for leadership”. Didn’t mention the death of his grandson, which by now half the city had to have heard about.

A tantalizing call to those in the dark.

Tantalizing for those who want to play ball. And tantalizing for those who see an opportunity to make a move against the king and knock that daddy-o off the board.

But they don’t know what he is. Skelly knows. And so last night she made calls. Calls to every contact she had: Bull Mosley of the Black Aces, Denton Lansdale of the Bruisers, Carly Espinoza of the Railroaders. She couldn’t get anybody from the Immortals, the Sinner Kids, the Black Sleeves. The Lantern Jacks told her to go fuck herself. So did the Bloody Nomads, the Killarney Boys, and the Devil Bitches. She didn’t tell them the truth. Not all of it. All she said was that she had intel that this was a trap.

By the look of the cars here, the only one who really listened was Bull Mosley. Maybe he believed her. Maybe he just didn’t give enough of a damn to show up.

It’s two hours after the meeting was supposed to begin.

She steps inside the warehouse, ducking out of the gray day into deeper darkness.

A minute later she staggers back outside, and pukes in a puddle.

 

A tremor shakes the ground. A furnace blast of heat scorches the air. Mookie jostles awake. Nora still lies asleep in his lap. Mumbling. Moaning. As though caught in the throes of a never-ending nightmare. He feels her stomach, lifts her shirt – the fabric peels away from the flesh with a Velcro rip, the dried blood sticking them together. Underneath it, no gunshot wound. Just a star-shaped pucker.

She’s healed.

Again the ground shudders.

He looks down at the pile of
Caput Mortuum
mushrooms. They no longer glow. The light, gone from them. Are they inert? Powerless now? He thinks, eat one anyway. You need to heal.
But… Skelly. Werth. Others might need them. Mookie pockets the rest of the spongy skull-shrooms, then stands up.

He shuffles slowly toward the edge, arm dangling. Passes the cold campfires and strange goblin altars. Sees his cleaver again there, decides this time to pick it up.

The rocky shelf cracks. Splits.

A brand new problem.

He steps close to the edge, careful not to go sliding into oblivion–

His foot slips.

His ass hits the shelf. He starts to slide–

Cleaver
. He uses the cleaver and drives it into the rock–

It buries. Catches. He holds tight. It stops his fall.

Mookie pulls his body back over the ledge. Climbs to his feet. Now he’s able to see. The orange glow burns brighter. The worm-gods are closer to the surface. A breeding ball of hell-snakes. Rising slowly to the mouth of the abyss. They’re coming up out of the Maw-Womb. To be born. To be vomited up.

He hurries back. Wakes Nora. She sucks a breath through trembling lips.

“Something’s different,” she says.

“I was just gonna say that same thing.”

“Something’s different with me.”

He blinks. “You’re alive.”

“I’m alive.” Like she doesn’t believe it. “How?”

“These.” He pulls out a handful of the mushrooms. By now the purple glow has dimmed to a violet miasma.

“Death’s Head,” she says.

“Yeah. A lucky find.”

“Lucky.” But the way she says it, it sounds like she’s not so sure.

An explosion sounds from somewhere beneath them. It reminds Mookie of the dynamite blasts down in the Sandhog tunnels. Davey Morgan, even back then, was the Master of the Blast. He’d say, “Every explosion is a snowflake, you see? Every type of rock, every shape of the wall, needs a charge designed for it. Gotta find the right touch to bring it down proper-like. You don’t caress it just so…” He’d clap his hands together. Cloud of dust from slapped palms. “Boom.” Then he’d go about designing the borehole pattern that would open the tunnel but not bring the whole thing falling down on their heads, a cascading pattern of holes fitted for the dynamite–

Pattern of holes.

Pattern of dots.

Blast.

Bone dry.

“That’s it,” he says. A shiver runs through him.

“What?” Nora asks, weakly.

“That’s what you were mumbling about. A pattern of dots. Blast. Bone dry.” He closes his eyes. Rubs his face with his one good hand. “They’re going to kill New York City. The whole. Damn. City.”

 

Skelly stands outside for a while, drawing breath.

But then, inside, she hears something: a cough.

Someone is still alive in there.

Impossible. Through all that…

There, again: the cough.

She has to go back inside. Just to see. Just to make sure.

She creeps back inside.

Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look. Eyes shut. They’re all dead. Nothing worth lookin’ at, sugar-pop. Don’t breathe through your nose.

She almost steps on an eyeball.

Then almost throws up again.

From behind her, the cough. Sharp. Wet. It almost scares her out of her own skin.

In the corner, both legs broken in multiple places, is Carly Espinoza. The head – and only female member – of the Railroaders. Blood wets her chin.

“I know you,” she bubbles. And coughs again.

“Carly, I’m so sorry…”

“Ain’t right. Ain’t… human. What he did. What he was. One minute he was the Boss and some of us was gearin’ up to maybe bring his ass down – and next minute he’s something else. Big and fast. Like an animal. Like the Devil.” Her eyes lose focus.

Skelly kneels down. Holds Carly’s hands.

“Guess he thought I was… dead. I ain’t dead, motherfucker,” Carly says. “I’m gonna kill him, girl. Gonna… kill him ten different ways.”

“I know.” Skelly doesn’t know what to say. She wants to run, go back outside and throw up again, forget all this ever happened. And yet, she remains. Stay hard. You’re tough. You gotta be.
“What happened?”

“He… took a phone call. Then he left.”

“What did he say? On the call.”

“I… I dunno. Not much. Something about meeting people somewhere. The hole. That’s what he said. And something about the Lincoln Tunnel.”

“He said that? The Lincoln Tunnel?”

“N…nah, he just said, ‘the tunnel’, but what else could he have–” Her words are lost beneath a wet, rattling cough. She drools a pink froth: spit and blood.

Skelly stands. Blinking back tears.

Carly lifts a limp hand. “Help… help me up.”

“I… can’t. Your legs…”

“I’m OK. I’m gonna be–”

Her eyes roll back in her head. Her body seizes.

Skelly stifles her own cry as she runs outside. The morning air feels good. She breathes deep. Tries not to think about it. Gets out her phone. Calls the police.

Then she sends a text to Burnsy’s pager.

WE NEED TO MEET ASAP 911.
 

Because she knows what’s happening and where.

 

Mookie tries explaining it. Tells Nora that when you blow a hole in a wall, you drill these holes. Different pattern for different jobs. On paper, that pattern looks like a series of connect-the-dots – meaningless to anybody who doesn’t know how to imagine the blast pattern of a series of dynamite sticks. He explains that right now – maybe today – the Sandhogs will be working on digging Water Tunnel #3 like they always do.

Except there’s a point where the tunnel passes near Tunnels #1 and #2.

New York City gets its water –
all
its water – from outside sources.

Cut off both tunnels, and with the third tunnel not expected to be finished until 2015, you destroy the city’s water source. That will render the city uninhabitable. People will be evacuated. It will be a no man’s land until they manage to pipe fresh water back into the city. Can’t bring in water by truck – the city at a conservative estimate uses over a
billion
gallons per day.

“That,” he says, “is how you kill New York City. You cut off its water, it’s like cutting off its head.” And the way you do that, he explains, is by fucking up the detonation of Water Tunnel #3 just as it’s near the other two tunnels. The wrong blast pattern – an ill-designed “pattern of dots” – will cause all three tunnels to blow. The water will cascade into the Great Below, but never reach the city.

That’s what they’re planning.

They have to be.

He doesn’t know why. But that has to be it.

Another boom below them. A sharp crack of stone like a glacier breaking. The tremor this time is sustained. He can hear them now, their wet flesh sliding against one another. The worm-gods as they rise to the vent of the Maw-Womb.

“While we wait here, the city’s going to die,” he says. A morose thought. He suddenly doesn’t hate the city so bad. He can’t imagine its streets dark. Some will stay behind, won’t they? Criminals. Lunatics. Mole Men. And the monsters will rise. Maybe that’s what it is. Maybe they want a playground. A place for gobbos and snake-men, for rock-bodied golems. For all the monsters and the starving worm-gods that birthed them.

As though on cue, one of the gods launches up out of the rift – the size of the ancient worm dwarfs anything Mookie’s ever seen on land or at sea. It’s a giant worm of black segmented flesh, with one mouth containing a hundred smaller mouths, a thousand dead eyes at the fore of its shunted head.

When it rises, a deafening whisper fills Mookie’s mind:

HYOR-KA.

Nora makes a small, afraid sound.

The world shakes.

Another worm-god rises, this one lacking the segmented body and featuring a ragged line of rock-like spikes along its dorsal ridge.

Another screamed psychic whisper:

UTHUTHMA.

The first worm-god ascends, squirming in mid-air like a mosquito larva in pondwater. It slides toward the crackling golden gate left in the air high above, and it’s fits perfectly – like the worm-god and the impossible hole were made for one another. A vacuum hiss, a booming echo. The beast wriggles into it and is gone.

The next worm-god heads for the same hole.

Mookie stands up. Helps Nora stand, too.

“Come on,” he says. “I know how we get home.”